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More on the fired CIA employee
The CIA has fired a senior officer for leaking classified information to news organizations, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning stories in the Washington Post that revealed the agency maintained a network of prison facilities overseas for high-ranking terror suspects.

The termination, announced Friday, marks the latest in a series of high-profile crackdowns on spy agency and Bush administration officials accused of unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

The CIA would not disclose the identity of the fired officer, citing Privacy Act protections. But current and former intelligence officials identified her as Mary O. McCarthy, a former White House aide who until this week held a senior position in the CIA's inspector general's office.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano would only say that an unnamed individual had admitted to having contacts with the press and discussing classified information. "That is a violation of the secrecy agreement that everyone signs as a condition of employment with the CIA," Gimigliano said.

U.S. intelligence officials, who requested anonymity because they were not at liberty to discuss the case, said McCarthy's admission came after she failed a polygraph test conducted as part of several ongoing CIA investigations into leaks.

The officials said McCarthy could face criminal prosecution, and that the Justice Department has been apprised of developments in the internal CIA probes. One U.S. official indicated that she had engaged in a "pattern of contacts" with more than one reporter.

McCarthy has held a series of high-level positions in the intelligence community during a career spanning two decades, according to a short biography posted on the website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank where she was a visiting fellow in 2001 before returning to intelligence work.

According to the biography, McCarthy served as senior director for intelligence programs at the White House's National Security Council under President Bill Clinton and, until July 2001, for President Bush. Previously, she held positions with the National Intelligence Council, which was formerly based at the CIA and is responsible for producing assessments on major national security issues.

McCarthy could not be reached for comment.

The rare, but not unprecedented, dismissal is likely to send fresh waves of anxiety through an agency battered in recent years for intelligence failures surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks and erroneous prewar assessments of Iraq. The CIA also has seen a series of high-level officers quit over confrontations with senior aides to Director Porter J. Goss.

During his tenure, Goss has emphasized upholding the CIA's tradition of secrecy — and he often has complained publicly about the damage caused by leaks. In recent congressional testimony, Goss said: "It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present, being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."

Goss was referring in part to stories in the Post last year that said the CIA was operating secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe, where high-value terrorist operatives were being detained and interrogated. On Monday, Post reporter Dana Priest was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for those stories in the beat reporting category.

The stories triggered a fierce reaction in Europe, including investigations into whether governments were secretly cooperating with a controversial CIA program by allowing the agency to use European facilities and airstrips to detain and transfer prisoners to other countries known to engage in torture.

U.S. intelligence officials said the disclosures about that program and other operations in recent months have been major setbacks in the United States' ability to win cooperation from European countries and other allies in the fight against terrorism.

"When liaison countries agree to do things with us and we can't keep that secret, that is damaging," said one U.S. official. "They're much less willing to cooperate on a wide range of subjects."

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said McCarthy was fired Thursday and escorted from the agency's campus in Langley, Va. A former senior CIA officer said that Goss sent an e-mail to agency workers on Friday saying that the dismissed employee had failed a polygraph test and subsequently admitted to making unauthorized disclosures.

CIA employees are subjected to polygraph examinations every five years as part of routine evaluations for their security clearances. But several officials said McCarthy had been subjected to a "single-issue" polygraph, meaning one specifically conducted to question agency employees about whether they were involved in leaks of information that appeared in the press in recent months.

Several former CIA officers said the agency's internal investigations have focused on lists of employees who were in position to know details about the agency's detention operations.

Whenever a program is as closely held as the detention operation, said one former CIA officer, staff must sign a special nondisclosure agreement in order to be briefed on the program.

"So there's a list of people who know."

Employees in the CIA's inspector general's office, where McCarthy worked, would have been familiar with some aspects of the agency's detention operations because the inspector general has conducted reviews of the CIA's detainee operations in recent years.

One former senior CIA official said the inspector general's office is often suspected by other agency employees of being the source of many leaks. The "IG's office" as it is known, is an independent, internal watchdog organization, with wide latitude to investigate sensitive programs and call attention to problems.

Washington has been wracked by a series of high-profile leaks and subsequent investigations in recent years. The White House was recently forced to acknowledge that President Bush — a frequent critic of leaks — had authorized the declassification of sensitive material that was shared with a reporter as part of the administration's effort to rebut mounting criticism of its case for war in Iraq.

Also, I. "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, has been indicted as part of a probe into whether administration officials leaked the identity of former CIA officer Valerie Plame.

And intelligence officials have launched probes into the source of leaks that Bush had authorized the wiretapping of U.S. residents — without court warrants — as part of its counterterrorism efforts in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement Friday praising the CIA's efforts to combat leaks.

"At a time in which intelligence is more important than ever, leaks have hindered our efforts in the war against Al Qaeda," Roberts said. "Those guilty of improperly disclosing classified information should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-04-22
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=149388